First, if you’re wondering what I as a Hillary supporter think about Hillary’s decision to continue running after yesterday, the answer is I don’t know what I think of it as a strategy.  Naturally I would like to believe that she could still somehow prevail.  I am not sanguine.  People are speculating that she is now running for the VP slot.  We’ll see. 

But — and this matters more to me — I most definitely admire her for her unswerving commitment to see the process through.  Despite the pissing and moaning in the media, and whatever the outcome, I predict that the day will certainly arrive when people will look back with awe and amazement at  Hillary’s insistence in going the distance against all odds and wish that they had chosen her.  She is indomitable.  I like that in a Democrat and so should other Democrats.  Alas, many of them are so beguiled by the media myths about Hillary that they just can’t see what a force of nature she really is.  

Obama could learn a lot from her and he’d be a better (future) president for it.  Instead, I imagine we’ll be stuck with him in his current incarnation — all rhetoric, all the time.   

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Yesterday, during a campaign speech, Barack Obama criticized Hillary Clinton’s 2002 Iraq war vote (The Swamp, via Memeorandum).  This is not the first time that Obama has brought up the issue, so it’s fair game.

Yesterday,  Joseph Wilson — retired Ambassador to African nations and Iraq who worked under Presidents Bush-I and Clinton (and the husband of Valerie Plame Wilson) — defended Hillary and questioned Obama’s reliability on foreign policy issues and affairs.  An excerpt follows. Of course, you can argue that this is just former Ambassador Wilson’s opinion. Nevertheless, it seems safe to call it an informed opinion.

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If the next president is a Democrat (and that is by no means a foregone conclusion) what if any investigations of Bush administration criminality and other misdeeds should be persued?

Or, should the Democratic president and Congress, in the spirit of a new era and an appeal to bipartisanship, wipe the slate clean?

The criminality and misdeeds include:

* The refusal of Alberto Gonzalez, Harriet Miers and other key adminstration officials to answer subpoenas in connection with the politically motivated firings of U.S. attorneys.

* The refusal to hand over to congressional investigators certain testimony from Vice President Cheney and other key administration officials in connection with the Wilson-Plame leak scandal.

* The official embrace of torture in contravention of the Constitution, treaties and conventions and common decency.

* The Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

* Pre-9/11 CIA and other intelligence failures.

* The willful destruction of millions of White House emails sought by congressional investigators.

* Voter supression efforts directed by the Justice Department.

* A full accounting of the costs of the Iraq war.

* No-bid contracts given Halliburton and other firms working in Iraq and Afghanistan with close administration ties.

* The consequences of the multiple Bush signing statements.

* Government and government-funded scientific research and studies skewed for political reasons.

* Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s legal conflicts of interest.

And the list goes on.

That’s how the Rand Corporation is describing the large-scale intervention we’ve gotten ourselves into in their most recent study. This is from the Rand Corp., which, I am pretty sure, is supposed to skew conservative.

From the press release:

Recognizing that the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will not be the last of their kind, a new RAND Corporation study issued today finds that U.S. capabilities to meet the threat of Islamist insurgencies are seriously deficient and out of balance.

The report finds that large-scale U.S. military intervention and occupation in the Muslim world is at best inadequate, at worst counter-productive, and, on the whole, infeasible. The United States should shift its priorities and funding to improve civil governance, build local security forces, and exploit information — capabilities that have been lacking in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Violent extremism in the Muslim world is the gravest national security threat the United States faces,” said David C. Gompert, the report’s lead author and a senior fellow at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “Because this threat is likely to persist and could grow, it is important to understand the United States is currently not capable of adequately addressing the challenge.”

The findings are from a major review of strategies to combat insurgencies RAND initiated at the request of the Department of Defense.

What is so absolutely, positively, bottomlessly aggravating about these conclusions is that people could have and would have and were telling us this certainly before we entered Iraq and perhaps before we entered Afghanistan (I recall the former, I do not recall the latter). And if you don’t believe me, well, here’s the Rand again:

The authors cite data from some 90 conflicts since World War II that show the surest way to defeat insurgencies is to foster local governments that are seen by their citizens as representative, competent and honest. “Foreign forces cannot substitute for effective local governments, and they can even weaken their legitimacy,” said co-author John Gordon.

Historically, large-scale military intervention against insurgencies — e.g., France in Indochina and Algeria and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan — more often fails than succeeds.

The study finds that because it can take time for a local insurgency to acquire strength and turn jihadist, the chances of defusing an insurgency are better than 90 percent when caught early. But those chances drop to less than 50 percent if the insurgency has the chance to become a full-blown uprising. Thus, the United States needs the ability to interpret “indicators and warnings” so it can act in the early stages of the insurgency.

Sickening. What and who was President Bush and his advisors listening to when making their decisions to begin military incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq? Feh. Don’t bother answering.

If this is the first time you are hearing this news, you aren’t alone - no one seems to have reported it. You know where I heard it, of all places?

Harry Shearer’s Le Show. Oh.My.God.We.Need.A.New.President.NOW.

Things are not off to a propitious start for those of us who believe that the destruction of those Central Intelligence Agency torture tapes should be thoroughly investigated. And that if people with big offices and fancy titles aren’t taken down then it will have been a failure.

This is not a case of rushing to judgment — as in prematurely assigning guilt in what is a criminal investigation in key respects.

But mine certainly is a minority view in the face of overwhelming praise for Michael Mukasey although the new attorney general has said and done nothing to merit it beyond naming veteran federal prosecutor John H. Durham as a so-called outside counsel to look into why the CIA destroyed tapes of the 2002 interrogations of two Al Qaeda operatives despite being explicitly told to preserve them.

In fact, what Mukasey has not said and done is downright troubling.

The bar is set so low after the ruinous tenure of former AG Alberto Gonzales that when U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy decided this week to hold off on pursuing his own investigation over the legality of the destruction of the tapes it was spun as an expression of confidence in Mukasey and not whether it was the right thing to do.

The fawning reaction of CBS News legal correspondent Andrew Cohen was typical:

“Can you imagine such respect and deference from the federal bench during the end of the reign of error of . . . Gonzales? No way. By the end of his tenure at Justice the federal judiciary was bunching up its robes in disbelief at assurances from federal prosecutors. This brief order from Kennedy backs the judiciary out of a looming constitutional showdown with its sister branch and gives both Mukasey and Congress the opportunity to take the first crack at getting to the bottom of this disturbing development.”

Cohen fails to note that those federal judges with wardrobe problems played into the White House’s hands by not lowering the boom on Gonzo for his serial misdeeds well before he slunk back to Texas, let alone putting heat on some of the same Bush administration bigs who are now implicated in Tapegate.

Or that the September 11 Commission was told to take a flying leap when it requested all CIA documents related to Al Qaeda prisoners, something that the spy agency knew it could do with impunity since President Bush had fought creation of the commission in the first place and was only marginally cooperative when he eventually caved in to the outrage that greeted his initial refusal.

The aforementioned people with big offices and fancy titles include Gonzales, when he was White House counsel; Harriet Miers, his successor as counsel; David S. Addington, who was then counsel to Vice President Cheney, and Jose Rodriguez, the former head of the CIA’s clandestine service who ordered that the tapes go bye-bye.

In echoes of the Ollie North affair, lawyers for Rodriguez told Congress this week that he won’t testify without a promise of immunity.

Granted that there always is a good deal of back and forth in the initial stages of any Washington investigation when the stakes are high. But there is too much going on – or not going on – here beyond the feel-good media pronouncements of Mukasey’s righteousness.

During his nomination hearings, Mukasey’s responses regarding torture were . . . well, tortured and he said he’d review the whole issue if he was confirmed stat. If he’s doing so it has escaped my notice.

Then after he was confirmed, Mukasey refused to appoint an independent prosecutor with broad powers like Patrick Fitzgerald in the Wilson-Plame leak investigation although the destruction of the tapes makes the destruction of a CIA agent’s career seem almost quaint by comparison.

The Bush presidency has been one big constitutional crisis, so if it takes a constitutional showdown to make sure that the investigation is on the right track, so be it.

You can bet the ranch that the executive branch is working hard behind the scenes to protect its own bunch of lawbreakers. The Justice Department is creating the appearance of playing softball when this scandal calls for hardball. And the judiciary is not asserting its powers.

Which leaves it up the Legislative branch to insist that politics will not trump the rule of law. That means that Rodriguez must testify without a grant of immunity. To do so otherwise is akin to a murderer facing no repercussions for testifying about his own crime.

“Doing the right thing” is the universal wrench of politics and governance. This is because what constitutes the right thing has more to do with how a pol or public official adjusts the wrench to fit their circumstances — which is to say survive with arms and legs intact if not win points — than the moral high ground.

That so noted, the news that Attorney General Michael Mukasey has appointed a outside prosecutor aka special counsel for the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into the willful destruction of those CIA torture tapes is welcome. But we’re so used to former AG Alberto Gonzales doing the wrong thing with such consistency that I’m having to suspend belief that Mukasey is doing the right thing and not playing a role in a drama with an outcome pre-determined by the White House.

I apologize for my cynicism, but you have to admit that it is well earned. There have been many investigations, criminal and otherwise, of administration officials that have gone nowhere because they were tinged with politics, and the only Bush era precedent for the Mukasey appointment is naming Patrick Fitzgerald to be an independent prosecutor in the Wilson-Plame leak investigation.

Mukasey assigned John H. Durham (photo), a veteran federal prosecutor from Connecticut, to lead the CIA tapes investigation with the FBI.

Durham’s appointment is an indication that there is reason to believe that high-ranking CIA officers, and perhaps other administration officials, may have committed criminal acts in destroying tapes of the 2002 interrogations of two Al Qaeda operatives despite explicit instructions that they be preserved.

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A year ago today, back when a surge was something that you didn’t want to fry your computer, extraordinary rendition was a stirring playing of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, people thought FISA was the federal agency that protected their bank deposits and a Huckabee was a . . . something or other, I posed a couple of questions:

Can we survive two more years of a Bush presidency?

Have we become a nation of sheep?

Looking back over the previous 12 months and ahead to a watershed 2008 election, the answer to both questions is an equivocal “yes.”

The ability of the most amoral presidency since forever to shock but not surprise ripened like cow pie in a pasture on a hot summer day during 2007:

* George Bush’s Forever War morphed into a business deal that merely forestalls the eventual collapse of Iraq: Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki gets coup insurance in the form of a long-term U.S. troop presence and the U.S. gets first dibs at Iraq’s vast untapped oil riches.

* In a fairy tale ending, the president commuted the prison sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff. Libby, of course, had been thrown overboard by his bosses as they lost control of the Wilson-Plame affair, which grew out of one of the administration’s bigger whoppers justifying the war.

* U.S. attorneys were sacked because they resisted becoming handmaidens for a Justice Department that had become a branch of the Republican Party with subpoena power.

* The shroud of secrecy was torn off the administration’s enthusiastic embrace of Nazi-like torture techniques, which so troubled the head of the CIA’s clandestine service — although not for the right reasons — that he ordered the destruction of terrorist interrogation videotapes despite being explicitly told not to do so.

* The administration’s bellicose Iran policy crashed upon the shoals of a report by the nation’s spymasters that Tehran apparently had shuttered its nuclear weapons program four years earlier, an inconvenient disclosure that did not dissuade the president and vice president from continuing to rattle their sabers.

* Two key administration players – presidential mentor Karl Rove and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales – resigned after working tirelessly to suborn the rule of law while stonewalling a feckless Democratic congressional majority in its feeble attempts to call them out. Both men, and most especially Gonzales, face a perilous New Year because of their probable criminal culpability.

* Meanwhile, the U.S. economy increasingly looked like a house of cards as the gap between Wall Street and Main Street grew, the war became a half-trillion dollar albatross and the dollar tanked against major foreign currencies. A home mortgage meltdown long in the making was exacerbated by an administration that shamelessly continued to reward the rich and give the finger to a middle class in crisis through, among other acts, vetoing an expansion of the life-saving S-CHIP program.

Can we expect more of the same in 2008? Absolutely. But that does not diminish the importance of digging deeper into the rotten core of the Bush presidency.

This means bringing Gonzales and other perps to justice, demanding increased transparency in what the administration and Congress does, working to restore civil liberties lost in the unprecedented Bush-Cheney power grab, and insisting that the Republican presidential field either climb out of Bush’s bed or explain why voters can expect more of the same any of them become president.

Will the republic survive another year? Yes, just as the hundreds of terrorism suspects have survived another year without due process in Guantánamo Bay and other way stations in the Rumsfeld Gulag, but there remains the specter of a citizenry even more disenchanted with its president and other so-called leaders and the institutions they profess to represent then at the end of the Clinton presidency.

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Does the most recent U.S. intelligence report on Iran’s nuclear program demonstrate once again the politicization of American espionage? According to this op-ed article from Le Figaro by the director and research director of the French Research Center on Intelligence, ‘The new NIE is a fake. Iran continues to pursue its nuclear weapons program, but the Americans have decided to backtrack to save face. Confronted with catastrophic consequences for the balance of power in the Middle East, Washington abandoned the military option. This [NIE] is deliberate American disinformation.’

By Éric Denécé and Alain Rodier, director and research director, respectively, of the Research Center on intelligence Matters (a Paris-based research institute).

Translated By James Jacobson

December 20, 2007

France - Le Figaro - Original Article (French)

On December 3, the Directorate of National Intelligence (DNI), a body attached to the White House that centralizes information provided by all American intelligence agencies, issued a report (a National Intelligence Estimate or NIE ) which guessed that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program in the autumn of 2003. This document, drafted in mid-2007, says that for the immediate future, Iran in not a nuclear threat, and that the Iranian regime is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than the U.S. had thought back in 2005. But the report stressed that Teheran continues to enrich uranium for civilian purposes, and it estimates that if the Iranian military effort were launched again, the country could produce nuclear warheads between 2010 and 2015.

This is a radical about-face. Released in 2005, the previous NIE on the Iranian nuclear program emphasized Teheran’s determination to acquire nuclear weapons. It was on the basis of this report that President Bush called for more sanctions and was contemplating the use of force against Teheran.

The NIE is a summary of what the various U.S. intelligence agencies forecast on topics of major interest. It is drafted at the request of the political authorities or members of Congress and is not the result of a jointly-executed analysis. The report is prepared by DNI analysts. The text is then circulated to the agencies concerned to collect their input. This is a process that necessarily takes several months. Sometimes the services that supply intelligence on the subject don’t even recognize their contributions to the final report.

The intelligence at the heart of this NIE comes mainly from intercepted telephone conversations between Iranian military officials, in which they complain about the decision to halt weapons development. These wiretappings were allegedly collected by the Government Communications Headquarters , the British eavesdropping service.

In the world of intelligence, it is customary to attribute to the interception services, information obtained from human sources that one wants to protect. Along these lines, it is legitimate for one to consider the case of Ali Reza Asghari, the Revolutionary Guard general who defected at the beginning of the year .

SEVERAL ASSUMPTIONS CAN BE FORMULATED

It is important to treat the content of this report with great caution. Indeed since the end of 2002, the politicization of American intelligence, which has been under constant pressure from the authorities, has prompted the presentation of the facts based on points of view that favor the political objectives of the White House or the Pentagon. A few examples: the creation of the Office of Special Plans in order to justify the war in Iraq; the masquerade February 2003 session at the United Nations, where despite the presence of director George Tenet beside Colin Powell, members of the CIA were shocked by the assertions of the Secretary of State WATCH ; the revelation of the real position [outing] of CIA officer Valérie Plame in order to undermine her husband, a diplomat whose report pointed out that Iraq didn’t acquire uranium from Nigeria, and so on. Examples of the manipulation of the facts by American authorities are legion. As a result, several assumptions can be made about the effect sought by releasing this latest NIE.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US

Former vice presidential chief of staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby has dropped his appeal of his conviction in the Wilson-Plame leak case

Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction but President Bush commuted his 30-month prison sentence.

“We remain firmly convinced of Mr. Libby’s innocence,” attorney Theodore Wells said today. “However, the realities were that after five years of government service by Mr. Libby and several years of defending against this case, the burden on Mr. Libby and his young family of continuing to pursue his complete vindication are too great to ask them to bear.”

Translation: Libby didn’t have a pot to piss in, and even had he won a new trial he may have faced even greater legal jeopardy. And, of course, may not have a sympathetic president to get him off the hook.

As noted here last week, Representative Henry “Mr. Investigation” Waxman, the dogged Democrat from California, is still trying to pry loose Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s FBI files on the case.

Waxman wants the potentially explosive files for an ongoing Oversight and Government Reform investigation because they include information that Fitzgerald did not present to the grand jury — and therefore is not subject to secrecy laws — that subsequently indicted Libby.

Once upon a time, when Iran supposedly still had a nuclear weapons program and there was a war in Iraq, there was a scandal involving Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former vice presidential chief of staff whose conviction in March as a result of the Wilson-Plame affair was commuted by President Bush.

Those halcyon days may seem like so much ancient history, but not for Representative Henry “Mr. Investigation” Waxman, the dogged Democrat from California, who is still trying to pry loose Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s FBI files on the case.

Waxman wants the potentially explosive files for an ongoing Oversight and Government Reform investigation because they include information that Fitzgerald did not present to the grand jury — and therefore is not subject to secrecy laws — that subsequently indicted Libby on obstruction of justice and perjury charges.

In July, the president turned down Waxman, but he has now asked newly-minted Attorney General Michael Mukasey to light a fire under the White House.

Fitzgerald, according to Waxman, has been cooperative and forwarded to his committee CIA and State Department files, but he cannot release White House-related files on his own.

The upshot of the Mukasey overture is likely to be more stonewalling because Waxman wants the transcripts, notes and other documents relating to Patrick’s interviews with the president, Vice President Cheney, former Chief of Staff Andrew Card, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove.

I agree with blogger Empty Wheel, late of FireDogLake, that the focus of Waxman’s continuing investigation is how it was that Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity as a covert CIA operative was leaked but there was no investigation or removal of security clearances for the blabbers, who include Rove, among others.

The answer, of course, is beyond obvious: The White House had no interest in doing anything, let alone play by the rules, once its primary objective was attained – striking back at Joseph Wilson for revealing that one of the principal rationales for the Iraq war was false and then ruining his wife’s career for good measure.

Bush administration apologists will continue to argue that Plame really wasn’t a covert operative, Patrick overstepped his bounds, Libby was framed and Bush’s commutation of Libby’s 30-month prison sentence was appropriate. They’re right about the commutation insofar as it was within the president’s purview, while the other claims are demonstrably false.

So if this is ancient history, why should Waxman be wasting his time and our money on it?

Because unlike Arkansas land deals and Oval Office blow jobs, national security was severely compromised and the truth must out.

After a long disappearing act, the Secretary of State has surfaced, sort of, with a New York Times interview so guarded that her own words appear only toward the end of a long piece with everybody else’s judgments about her tenure with the Bush Administration.

Most are harsh. Former colleagues and students at Stanford University are protesting her planned return to the faculty after serving “an administration that has trashed the basic values of academia: reason, science, expertise, and honesty.”

Colin Powell’s former Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, no rose himself in the Valerie Plame outing, complains about Rice’s performance as National Security Adviser, saying he felt like he was getting on a “gerbil wheel” every morning “and nothing would be resolved, and we’d get off at night, and the next morning we would get back on and do it all over again.”

Rice’s response is a shrug that “if that’s the assessment, you know, I’ll accept people’s assessment,” pointing out it is “a very difficult job because everything is by remote control. You do not own any of the assets.”

Introspection does not come easily to Condoleezza Rice. The interview reports her “falling back on her usual talking points, except this time, those talking points were interspersed with grumbling that she was being asked for personal reflection, something she does not like to do.”

Two books about Rice, almost certain to be critical, are coming out soon and she, of course, will be writing her own memoirs, but readers should not expect much in the way of personal revelation. At one point, she complained to the Times interviewer, “Now you’ve got me trying to psycho-analyze myself.”

No problem. There are plenty of others around who are eager to do that.

Cross-posted from my blog

They can start disinfecting the White House now. Karl Rove is leaving “for the sake of my family.”

It will take reams of obloquy to write his political obituary, but it’s not too soon to start.

Never the master strategist or shrewd tactician of Bush folklore, he was the greasy mechanic of the White House sleaze machine.

His first significant sighting came on Election Night 2000 just after the networks called Florida for Al Gore. With a knowing smile, Rove told a network reporter to wait for the absentee ballots, which we later learned had been rigged by the Bush people.

Fittingly enough, Rove started his career by stealing letterheads from an opponent’s office to send out fake messages and going on to perfect his craft under the tutelage of Nixon’s dirty trickster Donald Segretti.

Nixon brought shady operators into the fringes of his White House. Bush took it further, putting the man he called “the architect” into the heart of the Oval Office.

From the sliming of John McCain in the 2000 primaries to the outing of Valerie Plame and the firing of the U.S. Attorneys for not being political enough, Rove’s fingerprints have been all over every unethical, immoral and illegal move of the Bush Administration.

He may be leaving the White House, but Sen. Patrick Leahy’s Judiciary Committee will do everything possible to keep him in Washington. The capital wouldn’t be the same without him.

Cross-posted from my blog

If you’re one of those who were outraged by Bush’s commuting Scooter Libby’s sentence, be forewarned that it’s clear you will need to brace yourself for more outrage:

The White House on Tuesday declined to rule out the possibility of an eventual pardon for former vice presidential aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. But spokesman Tony Snow said, for now, President Bush is satisfied with his decision to commute Libby’s 2 1/2-year prison sentence.

It’s pretty clear what’s going to happen. MORE:

Snow was pressed several times on whether the president might eventually grant a full pardon to Libby, who had been convicted of lying and conspiracy in the CIA leak investigation. The press secretary declined to say anything categorically.

“The reason I’m not going to say I’m not going to close a door on a pardon,” Snow said, “Scooter Libby may petition for one.”

“The president thinks that he has dealt with the situation properly,” he added. “There is always a possibility or there’s an avenue open for anybody to petition for consideration of a pardon.”

Bush’s decision was sharply criticized by Democrats. Republicans were more subdued, with some welcoming the decision and some conservatives saying Bush should have gone further.

Likely scenario:

–Sentence commute puts band aid on clamor from conservatives to pardon Libby. For now.
–After the 2008 elections, Bush pardons Libby totally since he and his party have absolutely nothing to lose.
–All the statements the White House and Bush issued recently suggesting that Libby needed to pay his fine and do his probation will be brushed aside as if they were never made, or weakly spun.

The bottom line as our earlier posts note: this administration considers itself elected to govern the entire United States but seemingly feels it only needs to serve and please its hard-core party base. American history has never seen the likes of it.

There is little reason for the bulk of independent and moderate voters to support Bush and those that enable him and cheer him on in what is increasingly taking on the tone of an almost radical, no-consequences administration. And there’s little logic now in giving this administration the benefit of the doubt on most controversial matters, since its track record on the credibility front is so poor.

Hasn’t it come time to say it?

In the history of the American republic, it’s difficult to find a President who has proven to be as consistently polarizing and seemingly dismissive of the feelings of Americans who do not belong to his party — or, specifically, to his own party’s “base” — as President George W. Bush.

Bush’s “surprise” – or was it? — decision to commute the sentence of former White House and Vice President Dick Cheney aide Scooter Libby sparked an instant firestorm yesterday. There was the legal component (the get out of jail free card…the President’s power to do that without any challenge) and the political component.

But on a host of issues it has become crystal clear that rather than being “a uniter not a divider,” George Bush has proven to be a serial polarizer whose decisions and political style seem to consist of rubbing his ability to fully exercise Presidential powers (that he exercises to the max) in the faces of his opponents as he tilts on decisions to give his most loyal followers what they seek.

The motif of his adminstration (to domestic and foreign critics) is: “I have the power to do it and I’m going do it and what can you do about it?”

But the problem for George Bush and the Republicans: his opponents now don’t only include Democrats.

In fact, if you look at an instant poll conducted by Survey USA (h/t Political Wire) after Libby’s sentence was commuted, it shows one more instance of a White House that is now operating with very little public support — and support that is likely to shrink in coming months:

21% of Americans familiar with the legal case involving former White House aide Scooter Libby agree with President Bush’s decision to commute Libby’s prison sentence, according to a SurveyUSA nationwide poll conducted immediately after the decision was announced.

1,500 Americans were surveyed. Of them, 825 were familiar with the Libby case. Only those familiar were asked to react to the President’s action. 17% say Bush should have pardoned Libby completely. 60% say Bush should have left the judge’s prison sentence in place.

32% of Republicans agree with the President’s decision, compared to 14% of Democrats and 20% of Independents.

26% of Republicans say Libby should have been pardoned completely, compared to 21% of Independents and 8% of Democrats. Conservatives split evenly: 31% say Libby should have been pardoned. 35% say the judge’s sentence should have been left in place. 31% agree with the President’s decision to commute the prison sentence, but to leave the fine and conviction in place. Reaction to the President’s decision may evolve over time.

This poll attempts to measure a first reaction to the news, before many individuals would have had a chance to be influenced by political spin applied to the story.

Here’s the text of Bush’s Libby clemency decision announcement.

How did Bush make the announcement? According to the Washington Post, it was a decision made largely alone — not in the typical way such a decision is made…in the American democratic system:

For the first time in his presidency, Bush commuted a sentence without running requests through lawyers at the Justice Department, White House officials said. He also did not ask the chief prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, for his input, as routinely happens in cases routed through the Justice Department’s pardon attorney.

“Executive clemency is the president’s exclusive power under the Constitution, and there are precedents for exercising that power without going through the pardon attorney process,” said Bush spokesman Tony Fratto.

And — once again — the Post chronicles a President who essentially dismisses the feelings of Democrats or his opponents:

The White House appeared to be calculating that no matter what he did to keep Libby out of prison, Bush would not make Democrats happy, and if he did nothing, he would infuriate his strongest conservative supporters. As it was, some conservatives thought that Bush should have pardoned Libby and ended his legal battles…..

….William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard and a leading advocate of pardoning Libby, described yesterday as “a very good moment” for the president. “By acting here, he is showing to conservatives the kind of leadership that made conservatives loyal to Bush once and could make them loyal once more,” Kristol said.

So, in the end, it was largely a political decision to please his conservative base.

But, aside from upset and delighted talking heads and upset and delighted politicos and bloggers, will it matter? Time Magazine doesn’t think it’ll make that much difference:

And politically the move will probably change little. Those who suspect the worst about the Administration’s role in the Plame case are not likely to become any more motivated than they already were against Bush and the Republicans. On the right, the Republican base, which demanded mercy for Libby, will be placated. Had Bush not acted, they would have turned on him, weakening the last pocket of support he has. And for those Republicans who think Libby is getting off easy, Bush’s lengthy written statement — stressing that Libby still must serve probation and pay a hefty fine — may not be enough to settle the queasiness they feel about the whole affair. But few will flee to the Hillary Rodham Clinton for solace.

Some thoughts on Bush’s action:

(1) The decision to commute likely wasn’t entirely spontaneous. The rapidity at which the White House made the announcement suggests this had been in the works and ready to go for some time.

(2) Bush split the difference. On one hand, he had Democrats who wanted Libby to serve every second he had to serve. On the other, some conservative Republicans who wanted him completely pardoned. Bush didn’t pardon him but he did keep him out of jail. And he did it while arguing he wasn’t tinkering with Libby’s fine or probation.

(3) The attention over the Paris Hilton story may actually hurt Bush with the man and woman on the street who don’t follow politics. The Libby case and law may be confusing to many, but the first impression is that Hilton had to serve 23 days….and Libby will walk. So, in the end, some will ask, who was more privileged?

(4) The Republicans will have trouble running again as the “law and order” party (even if its candidate appeared in “Law and Order”) for some time. The sentence commute leaves a smell of corruption, cover-up and favoritism that all but the President’s most loyal supporters can sniff. This is Hollywood “high concept” stuff: you don’t have to know the case or be a political junkie to suspect that a) Libby got off because Bush (or more likely Cheney) didn’t want a loyal associate to serve time in jail and b) Bush’s decision was made for blatantly political reasons (after the debacle of immigration reform which angered his party’s base he’s “making nice” to his base).

(5) The Republican party may not truly recover from the Bush era until something happens (like a stunning defeat) where it can become evident to many voters that the Bush operatives have been either purged or demoted in the party and new blood has taken it over. But, in the end, Republicans will have to decide if this model of the Republican party is the one Ronald Reagan fought to create — or whether what Reagan might have wanted even matters in the 21st century (particularly if the real goal is to hold onto power no matter what).

(6) Look for the administration to yield absolutamente nada to the Congress or press for the rest of its term on issues such as warrantless wiretaps or other controversial matters. Clearly, it’s an administration that plays by its own rules, sets the rules and dares anyone to challenge them. Who has the power now to force the administration to play by more established rules and norms?

(7) Bush now seemingly surpasses Richard Nixon as the most polarizing President in recent American history. Nixon polarized Americans on a few key issues and some just didn’t like him. Bush has been a polarizer on many more issues. He hasn’t played to a “silent majority” but to a clamoring noisy base and conservative pundits. He seemingly runs a government by the base, of the base, and for the base — which isn’t exactly what the founding fathers had in mind.

(8) Somewhere Millard Fillmore and Warren G. Harding must be smiling. With the immigration bill defeat, the continued bad scene in Iraq and the decision to keep Libby out of jail — plus a host of other controversial policies and actions — it’s likely Bush will join an exclusive club and be ranked as one of the worst Presidents in American history.

Some say he’s not quite there.

But he still has nearly two more years to go…….

BUT THAT’S JUST OUR VIEW. HERE’S A CROSS SECTION OF OTHER VIEWS:
–Glenn Reynolds: “My prediction: Bush will rise in the polls as estranged conservatives warm to him in light of lefty indignation.”

–Andrew Sullivan:

Under the circumstances, it’s clear that Cheney was involved. When there are no normal channels of governance in this White House, it means the fusion of Cheney-Bush acting as extra-legal agents of their own power. We really no longer have the rule of law operating. We have the privileges and lies and policies of two men. The law is no competitor. And shamelessness is their ally.

–The Democratic Daily: “We all should have seen it coming and perhaps we did… True to course, Bush while on vacation has pulled another fast one on the American public and it’s a doozy!”

–Smofbabe: “The credibility gap in relation to the Bush Administration is approaching Grand Canyon proportions now that Bush has just commuted Scooter Libby’s prison sentence.”

–Ed Morrissey:

Unfortunately, like Solomon, Bush will probably find neither side satisfied. Critics of the administration and Plame-conspiracy activists want a scalp, and thought they’d enjoy the sight of Libby walking into Club Fed for a spell. Conservatives who believed that the entire investigation was bogus from the start want Libby cleared altogether. The $250,000 fine will stick their craw most especially. Don’t expect conservatives to let up on a full pardon, which will allow Libby to clear the felonies from his record, until Bush leaves office.

If Bush wanted to take any action — and I would have advised against it — this is as far as he should go. It allows Libby to remain free while he pursues his appeal, but it makes it clear that the White House won’t undo convictions for official misconduct. It strikes a balance that few will appreciate now, but later will accept as wise, as far as it goes. If Libby has a good case for reversal, let the courts make that decision.

–Orin Kerr:

The President’s powers here are absolute. And whether Scooter Libby’s original sentence was exactly correct is an interesting question I can’t answer; while I have a rough sense it was in the right ballpark, I didn’t follow the case closely enough to have any particular views of that.

Nonetheless, I find Bush’s action very troubling because of the obvious special treatment Libby received. President Bush has set a remarkable record in the last 6+ years for essentially never exercising his powers to commute sentences or pardon those in jail. His handful of pardons have been almost all symbolic gestures involving cases decades old, sometimes for people who are long dead. Come to think of it, I don’t know if Bush has ever actually used his powers to get one single person out of jail even one day early. If there are such cases, they are certainly few and far between. So Libby’s treatment was very special indeed.

–Precious Gems:

All hail Emperor Bush! Scooter libby who was convicted by the jury in plame’s case, now we learned today that he was commuted of his charges by president.Don’t forget though… Scooter was just the fall out guy. The truly guilty (Rove/cheney) in this incident were never charged in the first place.Outrageous, This pardon is absolutely outrageous.

–My DD has this roundup of Democratic Presidential candidate reactions.

–Powerline: “This strikes me as an excellent resolution. To my knowledge, it was first advocated by Paul’s friend Bill Otis, a former federal prosecutor, in an op-ed in the Washington Post. The idea quickly gained support. I also think the President’s commutation of Libby’s sentence will go over well with the party’s conservative base and will contribute, to some degree, to a restoration of Bush’s standing with conservatives.”

–Political scientist Steven Taylor:

I was not surprised that Bush acted (and I will not be surprised if Bush eventually pardons him) but I was rather surprised at the swiftness of the action. The conventional wisdom seemed to be that Bush would let Libby twist in the wind for a while, but I supposed when one’s approval ratings are Nixonian, what does one have to lose? Further, the base that is sticking with Bush wanted Libby to be pardoned, so this should placate them for the moment. Given the way Bush values loyalty, I suppose that there really oughtn’t be any real surprise here.

–Daily Kos:

The probation office’s recommendation would have required Libby to go to jail for 15 to 21 months. Bush rejected the probation office’s recommendation as well. Bush’s unprecedented special consideration for his special assistant and the chief of staff for the Vice President is proof positive that this President does not believe in equal treatment under the law.

More than issuing strong statements, it’s time for Congress to investigate this commutation. Grant Libby immunity and find out everything that was behind the leak, behind the lies that took us to war and that started this whole case in the beginning, and behind this commutation.

–Patterico’s Pontifications:

You do the crime, you do the time. The jury said Scooter Libby did the crime. He should do the time. The Republican Party is going to pay a huge, huge price for this….Don’t kid yourself: this sort of thing is very significant to swing voters. It’s like the Foley business in the last election. Yes, we were already going to get beaten in 2008 because of Iraq. But now, we’re going to get slaughtered. This particular convicted felon wasn’t worth it.

–Don Surber:

This was a witch trial. America should be ashamed that it allowed this “special” prosecutor to ignore his mission — finding out who blabbed to Bob Novak that Joe Wilson’s wife was CIA — and instead the prosecutor went after Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. Richard Armitage, who actually leaked the information, walked. Disgusting…..Pardon Libby. If Bill Clinton can pardon that international fugitive from justice Marc Rich, then Bush can pardon an innocent man.

–Tom Watson:

Remember when candidate Bush openly mocked a Texas prisoner he had just put to death? When he pursed his lips and squeaked “please don’t kill me” in imitation of Karla Faye Tucker, who had appealed to Governor Bush for clemency? The same Karla Faye Tucker who became the first woman to be executed in Texas since the Civil War? The repentant born-again Christian who spent 14 years on death row and didn’t ask for a pardon, only clemency? The self-same Karla Faye Tucker who prompted tough guy law enforcement-loving George W. Bush to push back his Greenwich, Connecticut cowboy hat and spew: “It’s tough stuff , but my job is to enforce the law.” The same man who signed Karla Faye Tucker’s death warrant?

This believer is rough justice just couldn’t let Scooter Libby trade his fine pinstripes for those shabby prison clothes, could he? What was it he said, again? Oh yeah - “…I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive.”

–Protein Wisdom:

For Bush, this gambit comes at the perfect time, though I’m not sure how helpful it will be for Republicans in the long term; the President’s decision to commute the sentence should take the spotlight off of his Immigration Reform Bill debacle, at least for the time being — but it will also turn the public conversation to political favoritism, and already, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer are positioning themselves for high moral dudgeon….

……This falls short of a pardon — and I suppose there’s still a chance that Bush will grant Libby the full pardon before exiting the White House, should Libby lose his appeal on the conviction. But if the President was going to take the kind of sustained heat he’s about to get from the press and Congressional Democrats, anyway — and believe me, they’ll be falling over themselves to get in front of a camera to talk about the Republican culture of corruption — he should have just done the right thing and pardoned Libby completely.

–Anonymous Liberal:

I don’t know whether this will hurt or help the President politically, but I’m pretty confident it won’t generate the outrage it deserves. This is an act of extreme hubris, and it will serve to normalize behavior that just shouldn’t be acceptable in a democracy. Presidents should not be in the business of pardoning members of their own administration. It reeks of corruption and it undermines faith in the system.

If the President thinks 30 months is too stiff a sentence for the crimes Libby was convicted of (and for which he showed no contrition), then he has a moral obligation to take the steps necessary to correct similar injustices that have occurred or will occur in the future. He should start reviewing all the sentences of people convicted of similar crimes and push for legislation to reduce the relevant sentencing guidelines. I can virtually guarantee you that won’t happen, though. After all, the guiding principle throughout this affair has been that it’s only unjust when it happens to Scooter.

–Upstart: “It’s news like this that makes me feel especially anarchistic. My government continues to make me feel ashamed in ways I’ve never known. America is failing.”

–Steve Benen:

In conservative circles, there’s a standard approach to law and order: we need tougher sentences, inflexible mandatory-minimums, and harsh punishment for those found to have broken U.S. law. But if you help expose the identity of a covert CIA agent during a war, lie about it, and are convicted by a jury on multiple felony counts, those standards no longer apply. Perhaps we should call this what it is: “amnesty.”

I suspect a standard conservative defense will be, “But it’s not amnesty; Libby is being punished. He has to pay a fine.” First, when it came to immigration policy, asking lawbreakers to pay a fine was still called “amnesty” and it was considered unacceptable. Second, Libby’s fine will be paid for by his well-connected, wealthy Republican friends who generously contributed to his legal defense fund. His “punishment” is non-existent.

–Red State: “Now, we get to hear what Hillary Clinton thinks about the proper uses of the pardon power…. Come to think of it, we can also hear Mrs. Clinton discuss whether losing your high federal office is insufficient punishment for perjury.?

–The Huffington Post’s Bob Cesca:

The Republican-American pundits and bloggers are, of course, applauding this action by the president for some reason, which is weird since the same set of googly-eyed Cotton Mathers wanted President Clinton at least impeached and, at most, castrated after he was caught lying to a grand jury about oral sex. However, in the case of Scooter Libby, justice is simply too unfair and mean.

–The All Spin Zone looks at this decision in the context of a psychological profile. This post must be read in full but here’s a tiny piece of it:

The worst case outcome for this personality profile is a spiraling deterioration in behavior that has been sparked by a triggering event…often initiating a chain of linked negative events which are coupled with the absence of the normal willingness and wherewithal to enact and enable a process of self-correction. Obfuscation soon trumps objectivity and disaster is often inevitable.

Whether the presidency of George Bush will meet with the same fate as that of Richard Nixon remains uncertain. Notwithstanding, both men became victims of their own fears and a preoccupation with avoiding failure…a preoccupation that likely set them on a path of unfortunate and unenlightened self-destruction. In the end, fear left unchecked and unwound becomes reality unhinged. The door of denial that shields the psyche therefore tumbles to ground.

–Andrew Sullivan II. We don’t usually include TWO quotes from one writer in a roundup, but Sullivan’s last entry deserves inclusion here. He’s responding to a David Brooks column:

It is hard to think of an action more contemptuous of the rule of law - except for so many decisions made by this lawless president, acting as a monarch. De facto pardoning or commuting of a sentence was once a royal prerogative that even kings reserved for those they didn’t know, convicted clearly unjustly, whose sentence had often largely been served. And yet Bush uses it in office for a friend, hours after the failure of his appeal, to protect his own political and legal liability for jeopardizing intelligence and compromising national security.

What more do we need to know? These people think they are above the law. This president thinks he is above the law. The vice-president believes he is above the law. And when democratic leaders act as if they are the law unto themselves, and are prepared to upend the justice system to serve their own political ends, it’s time for a revolt. Sorry, David. But this won’t be forgotten - ever. It’s a final straw, a call to wake up before these criminals get away with it one more time.

FOOTNOTE TO READERS: Each writer who gives his/her opinion believes he/she is right.

“The number of people who would be angered by a (Scooter Libby) pardon who haven’t already abandoned the president could fit in an airport shuttle bus.” — John Dickerson

Dickerson has it exactly right. So how then to explain the hemorrhage of feelings from conservatives this week over the impending imprisonment of a very smart man who nevertheless valued loyalty over honesty, was caught dead to rights and cooked to a turn in a trial that will be appeal proof?

One answer is that there is a lot of sympathy for Libby’s wife and children (indeed not just from conservatives). The cliché that you don’t get to pick your parents has been getting a vigorous workout since U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton told Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff that he needed to get ready to shove off for the country club with bars . . . er, the Big House in six to eight weeks. Unless President Bush intervenes, of course.

Another answer is that a lot of otherwise intelligent conservatives still don’t understand – or don’t want to understand – what Libby was indicted, tried and convicted for because they don’t think there was an underlying crime. For cryin’ out loud! Paris got caught driving drunk and then drove with a suspended license. Twice. And they remain confoozled about why Valerie Plame’s CIA job status and Joseph Wilson’s trip to Niger were not allowed to be put into play in Walton’s courtroom.

Yet another bunch of conservatives wail that Walton was too tough on Libby and is a supercillious (read uppity) Negro who refused to kiss the asses of the legal lights who signed Scooter’s amicus brief. As it is, the 30-month sentence is smack dab in the middle of the federal sentencing guideline and Hizzoner is exactly the kind of guy that conservatives would otherwise applaud – a no-nonsense judge who has long hurled fire and brimstone from the bench regardless of whether the perp is a carjacker or a bond daddy gone bad. (By the way, Walton pretty much was required by law to deny bail to Libby because an appeal is going to be DOA given the overwhelming evidence and apparent lack of procedural missteps.)

No, I think that all this conservative hankie wringing boils down to one thing: They simply believe that it’s unfair that Scooter has to go up the river.

This is a remarkably uncreative — and I daresay dumb — response coming as it does from a chickenhawk peanut gallery that had been slavishly worshipful of George Bush until the stink got so bad that they pinched their noses and fled crying that he had not really been one of them all along.

This is a president who himself has taken astonishing liberties with the truth, coddled the rich and shat on the poor, turned a blind eye to the suffering of Hurricane Katrina victims, advocated torture, suspended habeas corpus, applied the law anything but equally, turned the Just Ice Department into a branch of the Republican Party and committed several hundred thousand men and women to a Forever War of which some Libby sycophants have the temerity to say he is an unwitting victim.

Unfair, my ass.

One of the greatest political (/conservative) thinkers of the last century William F. Buckley, wrote a column for National Review in which he calls on Bush to pardon Libby. Buckley essentially argues that although Libby broke the law, he should be pardoned, because, here it comes, he caused no real harm and he is not a bad guy. O, and the ones who say that Libby should go to jail do not care about justice, they simply want to “damage the Bush administration.”

Of course, all of the above is no reason to pardon someone. Libby, Buckley admits, broke the law, lied and, by doing so “he hindered the execution of justice.” The logical, and legal result: jailtime.

It surprises me that an intellectually honest traditional conservative like Mr. Buckley - who is a firm believer in the Rule of Law - would argue that Libby should be pardoned for before mentioned ‘reasons.’ They are not ‘reasons,’ they are excuses.

Libby caused, thus writes Buckley, no damage at all, to no one. I wonder whether Mr. Buckley watched Plame’s testimony before US Congress?

I greatly respect William F. Buckley Jr., but I would hope that he would be above overly partisan politics like this.